Category: Races

Cuba – Conqueror Virtual Challenge

Jess Guth2 Comments

As promised, here is some more detail about the virtual challenge I chose. There were a few I looked at. The Berlin Wall was tempting but short, there’s a Lord of the Rings one, an Avengers one… but the one that caught my eye was Cuba – a 70 ish mile virtual journey from Santiago to Havana. It caught my eye for several reasons. In 2011 Kath and I went to Cuba and the trip we did was sort of that route in reverse. I thought it would be a nice way to remember that adventure and reflect on how much things have changed and how much they are still the same. I thought having a tangible excuse to spend time with those memories would be nice. It also feels like I want Cuba in my thoughts at the moment. Our god daughter and her brother are half Cuban, one of our best friends is Cuban. I don’t know anywhere near enough about how things currently are in Cuba because there is so little news coverage that really provides any detail but it sounds horrendous. From the news I do see, little help seems to be getting through, blackouts continue as the energy crisis worsens, there are critical food shortages as well as a lack of medicines and basic necessities. Add earthquakes and hurricanes and a government responding badly and US sanctions making everything even more difficult and you have what the UN last week called a worsening humanitarian crisis. And I can do nothing really. What I can do is keep Cuba and the Cuban people in my thoughts. I can look for ways to support humanitarian efforts, I can keep developing legal curricula that focus on the importance of international law so that the next generations do better. I can keep thinking about what I can do. It’s almost nothing, it’s nowhere near enough and I absolutely realise that me doing the challenge is really just self indulgent crap. But for me it is also away to keep my privileged perfect life in perspective, to remember that when I can, I need to do something, however small and insignificant that something is. It has to be better than nothing. It has to.

So the challenge works using an App. In the App you have your profile where you find a list of your challenges (yes there are monsters who do more than one at once). You can add distances manually or you can connect your app of choice – I have connected Strava so I don’t have to remember to upload. You can count any sport where you cover distance and apparently you can also convert things like weight training or yoga – not sure how, not something I am interested in doing. The challenge itself basically opens on a map. In my case it popped me on the map on the edge of Santiago De Cuba and as I clock up my miles here in West Yorkshire, I move along the map in Santiago de Cuba. At certain points I unlock what are called rewards. First I got a postcard. A postcard appears to be a little essay about the place. Some history and local info. I haven’t fact checked it but nothing seemed obviously incorrect when I read it – perhaps just a bit sanitised for tourists. That’s how far I’d got after my first run on Monday.

Next I ‘unlocked’ a Local Spot – Castillo de San Pedro de la Roca. The App gives me a bit of information and some pictures – the pictures were instantly familiar. And here the reflections begin. By the time we got to Santiago De Cuba on our trip, Kath and I were pretty fed up with the stupidity of most of our tour group (why oh why did we think we could do group travel, we hate people) so when we got to the Castle we kept ourselves to ourselves and just people watched. Then we saw the quickest and most spectacular sunset I have ever seen. It makes sense when you know, but it had never occurred to me that sunsets vary in the time it takes for the sun to dip behind to horizon based on where you are in relation to the equator. So I am used to slow lingering sunsets that go on for a while – because, hello northern Europe but not so much in the Caribbean – the sun just sort of drops out of the sky. No long lingering evening watching the sun slowly make its way through the sky – just a sort of constant steady decent down past the horizon. Spectacular. Anyway, it was a lovely evening and after the sunset went for a nice meal and I learned that when there are enough mosquitos just sitting next to Kath isn’t enough to keep me safe, I actually had to use repellent. No seriously, usually when I am with Kath, I don’t get bites at all, she does. Anyway, I wonder what Santiago is like now. I am sure the sunsets are as spectacular as ever, but what will the sun rise to? Does each new day bring hope or just more suffering? And as I was looking at the app, reading the information and viewing the pictures they have, I wondered if I could get fit enough to do something outrageous again, something that people might actually pay money to support or see me do. What if I could work towards something that could help just a tiny little bit. So maybe that’s something I could do. Maybe. Anyway, here are two 2011 photos from my 2026 virtual starting point for this journey.

Santiago de Cuba
Santiago sunset 2

I only did 2 miles today. I gave myself a month to do this challenge and I am now behind pace but that really doesn’t matter. I’ll catch up eventually. I also ‘unlocked’ a Local Interest spot. Again, information and some pictures from the App. I feel a little bit like I am reading a travel guide, and I guess in some ways I am. I am only just over 7km in. The app lets you see at a glance how far you have come (I think you can set it to miles or km, I’m on km at the moment) and how many days you have done/have left. You set the time goal when you set up the challenge – you can change it though. The App also gives you the option to view the area you are in in Street View – but of course this is Cuba. To my delight there is no official Google Street View in Cuba. A little bit of the world that doesn’t exist in Google. That feels perfect to me in this always online world. I was thinking back to 2011 when we took our trip. I had just handed in my PhD, I was enjoying my teaching and my writing, the thought of running hadn’t crossed my mind, in many ways the world was simpler then. But so much is also still the same. I don’t really feel any different – a little more cynical maybe, a little creakier and stiffer and possibly a little more unfuckwithable and less tolerant of bullshit.

Anyway, this is supposed to be a running blog. So today, after work, when the temptation to just fall face first onto the bed and whimper was almost overwhelming, I instead marched a mile uphill and then jogged a mile back down – no run/walk intervals as such unless you take one long mile slog uphill and an ok but slow plod down the hill as a giant walk/run interval. My legs were not a fan of uphill – my calf muscles were proper grumpy with that and then running down everything was a bit bemused that I wasn’t stopping after 30 second. I really wanted to stop and walk – but come on – it’s downhill. So I didn’t stop, because sometimes I can make my brain behave and I can think things like – ‘you can do this, you are good at hard, you’re breathing fine, no that didn’t hurt, oh look rabbit. And all is fine.

So, virtually I am on a random road in Santiago de Cuba and in reality I am trying to function in a world that has gone insane, in a world where I am safe and comfortable and oh so privileged simply because of where I was born and chose to live. The virtual challenge is making me want to run, it’s making me want to unlock the next ‘reward’ and move through Cuba because I want to know where this will take me, what ideas I might have, what rabbit holes (not literally I hope, Kath did that once) I will go down and whether in all of that there is anything I can do that can help make the world a better place.

Time for Big Girl Pants!

Jess Guth1 Comment

And just like that we are in mid April. I mean what the actual fuck are we doing in April? Remember my happy run back in January? The one where I felt good. Yep, can we go back to that please. It really felt like I was getting somewhere again and that fitness was slowly coming back and that running could be really fun again. And then I got flu. I was off work for most of January because I just couldn’t shake it. I feel like I was not only off work, I feel like I may have stepped off the world – I don’t really remember January. I was asleep or reading or watching romance fiction – because that’s normal for me (not). I am not having a go at romance readers here – you do you. It’s just not my thing generally and I am still at a loss to explain why it was then. Anyway, February just felt like a battle to get through a day without falling asleep. I did very little in terms of moving off the sofa/ chair. I went to work when I had to but otherwise I was just a couch potato because anything else was too exhausting. I went for a walk at Bolton Abbey and then needed a 2 week rest.

Towards the end of February I thought that maybe it was time to get moving again. I was scared of running though. I didn’t want to get down the road and not be able to function. So I got on the bike in the garage and actually it wasn’t horrendous. I did two days back to back of cycling for 45 minutes ish taking it easy, not following a programme, just sort of peddling along thinking about nothing much. Then I did another virtual ride a week later. And there we are in March and I can still barely move – clearly running the Kielder 11 mile night run was never going to happen. We still went to Kielder Water even though neither of us could do our races and we had a couple of lovely walks instead of our planned runs – but I was tired. I slept lots, lounged in the hot tub, did some very gentle yoga.

When we got back from Kielder Water, we decided to try the gym again. We’re too old to get away with not strength training so we have been going – not lots but at least once and mostly twice a week for a good weights session. We went really early on a Sunday and I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. Maybe I just hadn’t woken up yet. So the gym has been the most consistent. Yoga is second. On the 23rd March I finally went for a run. Just a mile at run walk of 30/30. It should be easy, right. Well it wasn’t. But I did it and tried hard not to be grumpy about it. But then I was scared again so ended up not doing anything, then going back to HITT once or twice and then today I went for another run. Same thing: A mile run walk and then turn round. This time I kept going a bit after I turned round so in total I ran/walked a mile and a half and walked half a mile. Progress is progress.

I’ve deferred Rasselbock’s Sherwood Big Loop event that we were looking at doing next weekend to their 2 day winter event instead and we have a plan for that – watch this space. The next thing booked is the 23k at the Lakeland Trails in July – I am not thinking about it really. I am not likely to be ready and that’s ok. I can’t rush this. I just need to build some consistency, just get out there one step at a time. Motivation is hard because running is actually just hard at the moment. It isn’t fun and I am struggling to access the memory bank of fun running.

So anyway, that’s where I’ve been in case you’ve missed me. I’ve been hiding and grumpy and frustrated and paralysed by the task ahead. But being grumpy about fitness lost and scared of how hard it’s going to be will not actually make me feel any better and will also absolutely not get me fit again. So it’s time for big girl pants. I am a 47 year old woman, I am generally fuelled by perimenopausal rage (and caffeine) – I can do anything.

Happy 10 Year Dopey anniversary

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10 Years ago today I ran my first marathon. And my first marathon was part of my first Dopey Challenge. 10 Years. The world has changed. I have changed. And yet it also seems like yesterday. I had a much longer blogpost in draft. I was trying to make sense of the last 10 years plus of running and what I have learned. But I couldn’t quite get the words right. I am not sure I am quite clear on what it is I wanted to say. Or maybe it’s my flu-fogged brain. I started drafting the post just after I posted the last one about feeling good – then I got flu so I haven’t run all week. So maybe what I started drafting doesn’t feel quite right now.

So I will just share these two pictures. Our Dopey Challenge Finisher picture and the Marathon medal. Reflections of what is now really 11 years of running properly – sometimes more not running than running – might still come. But as I sit on the sofa today feeling frustrated that I got flu just as I was settling into quite a nice exercise routine, let’s just let this be a reminder that sometimes it is fun to do the impossible.

Good luck to all the Dopeys starting the marathon tomorrow. One foot in front of the other!

Doing Hard Things Round 2: The Great North Run

Jess Guth3 Comments
Photo by gillyphotography.co.uk

Last weekend was a weekend of running adventures. Different adventures and experiences. On Saturday Kath took part in the last of the 2025 Due North CIC trail half marathon and 10 km series. I marshalled and had a lovely 90 minutes or so at the top of Malham Cove clapping and cheering on runners doing both the half marathon route and the 10km route before heading back to the finish to help hand out goodie bags and pies. It was glorious and energising and inspiring. Kath did really well, the runners were fabulous and it felt inclusive, supportive and fun. Maybe one day I will get myself in the right space to have a go – at the 10km route.

Sunday was the Great North Run. I hadn’t trained for this. I had barely run since the Rasselbock Half in July and I hadn’t trained for that either. Was this a stupid idea? Well yes and no. I thought about pulling out several times. I got messages reminding me to trust my training and enjoy it – good advice, assuming there has been any training to speak of. So what was I thinking going in? Well, I don’t like DNS. DNS is worse than DNF. To me not starting just feels like complete failure. The only times I won’t start an event are situations where I am either genuinely injured or not well or where I know I won’t finish and starting would mean that I have to rely on event volunteers or staff for help or where I present a risk of being a medical emergency. If not finishing has minimal impact on others, I will start even if I might not make it. Psychologically, I had to start this one. For me. To silence the voices in my head that have been getting louder and louder, insisting that there is no way I can currently get round a road half marathon.

I was anxious. I didn’t much like the crowds as we walked through Newcastle to the start, found the baggage bus, queued for the loos, made our way to the assembly area and stood around for a while. I found my zen somehow. Then we started moving forwards in little waves. Then the red arrows flew over making me smile. Then we were off. Kath set off and I very quickly lost sight of her as I tried to settle into my run/walk. I didn’t really like being in the wave we were in because I was surrounded by much faster runners. This was the pace that was ambitious but realistic when we signed up, before I just didn’t manage to get myself out there with any consistency. It was the pace I have managed to get close to before. But right now I am a long long way off that pace. I was really conscious of getting in other people’s way. I tried really hard to tuck in and not take up space. I tried really hard to be ok about my run/walk.

The support was incredible but also overwhelming and at times it felt like the crowds were closing in. I had flashbacks to the London Marathon and people getting right in my face and I could feel panic rising. What can I feel? Sticky – my fingers are sticky from my drinks bottle. What can I see – a unicorn, a runner in a unicorn costume just ahead of me. What can I hear – my name being shouted with lots of encouragement. And I am grounded again for a little while before the panic comes again – in waves. I don’t feel like I belong. I am still running 30 seconds and walking 30 seconds. It is all actually going to plan. It’s all fine and yet it isn’t. I battle the panic from just over 1.5 miles to the 5 mile marker. I am walking much more now and I can’t quite settle. I do the maths in my head – how long will I be out here, how much longer to get to the finish, how long will Kath have to wait. I resist the temptation to check the app to see how she is doing. If I get my phone out of my pocket I might call her to say I am calling it. I might cry. I am crying. I think about maybe just not doing this.

Waiting to start

I wonder if I can get to half way. My right foot hurts, my hips hurt, I keep scanning my body and the message is always the same – there is some pain but none of it is serious and none of it is a reason to stop. Mile 6 feels like it takes forever. It was actually faster than the previous mile. As I pass 10k I suddenly feel a bit more positive. Maybe there is a slight break in the crowds coming past me. I’m not sure. I just feel less anxious. I start to take more notice of the signs and the support. I start to feel a bit more like it is ok for me to take up some space. A bloke from 2 waves behind me walks along side me for a few paces to fuel, asking if we are nearly there yet and I cheer him up by telling him we are very nearly half way. He tells me I am doing great and then disappears off into the distance. Somehow the interaction makes me smile. I realise that an earlier one had played on my mind – I had dropped into a walk and a bloke came past me, turned to look at me and said ‘For fuck sake’. I am pretty sure I didn’t block him. I am pretty sure I wasn’t in his way. I am pretty sure he didn’t have to change his line. I hope that taking out whatever was going on with him on me, helped him get it done, I also hope that he has a particularly energetic batch of fleas hatch in his pubes.

Mile 8 was a big thing in my head. I am not sure why – other than maybe running maths. I was thinking in 15 minute miles. I knew I was going slower but for the purposes of my running maths, 15 minute miles worked well. 4 miles an hour. Which meant that if I could get to 8 miles then I only had to do another hour and then I would only have a mile to go. The additional minutes and the .1 don’t feature in running maths. When I made it to 8 miles I knew I would finish. I didn’t know how long it would take me but I knew. The doubts about finishing and whether maybe it would be better to pull out were gone. I settled into the pain. I kept telling myself that I only had to keep doing this for another hour. If I could push through for an hour I would be nearly there. Then we saw the red arrows. I am not sure there are many places on the course where you can see them so this felt like my own personal 8 mile celebration.

I tried to run a little every mile – and I did but I think in miles 11 and 12 I only ran for 30 seconds each – it hurt. I kept pushing the walking – that hurt too. I found focus in the pain somehow. I knew it wasn’t dangerous pain, I knew I wasn’t doing serious damage or injuring myself. It was just my body telling me that it wasn’t prepared for this and that it really wasn’t entirely happy about what I was asking it to do.

As I made my way down the short sharp slope before the ‘finishing straight’, two women passed me and one said to the other ‘now prepare yourself for the longest mile of your life’. And it is. You turn and it feels like you should be there but you still have a mile to go. The support is loud and brilliant. After an age I got to the 800 metres to go sign. I kept walking as fast as I could and talking to myself. Both firm and reassuring because giving up now would be stupid wouldn’t it. Never mind the longest mile – the 400 metres from the 800m to go to the 400m to go sign were at least 3 miles long. It felt like forever. I started jogging really slowly at the 400m sign. I glanced at my watch and realised that I would probably just get under 3 hours 40 if I kept pushing. I got there. I crossed the finish line and felt – well nothing really. I walked and got water, a medal and a bag/t-shirt and made my way through the crowds to find Kath (she did really well). We queued for an hour or so to get on a bus back into town and got back to the hotel about 10 minutes before our dinner reservation. Job done.

So reflections. I can do hard things. This was hard. I am annoyed at myself for lack of training and the resulting lack of fitness is just embarrassing and silly. No excuses. I didn’t do the work. The Great North Run was not fun. This particular ‘impossible’ was not fun to do at all. It just was. I am glad I pushed through and did it. It was a good mental exercise and I am proud of myself for coming through those first 5 miles of waves of panic. 2 days after the run I am sore, sore but not broken. This was my slowest road half marathon ever, slower than the first one I ever did at Disney World in 2013. Over an hour slower than my PB and nowhere near my running ambition which is to run strong and happy. The positives – I am mentally tough. My superpower might just be a complete inability to accept that I can’t do something. Realistically, starting on Sunday was a bad idea. It was always going to be pretty awful and yet doing it and it being awful was still better than not doing it. Because I have done it, I know what needs work. I have pushed myself into a place where I want to do the work. Doing the GNR on Sunday was the test I think. It was always going to tell me whether I am done with longer distances or whether I want to keep trying. And I’m not done. While I was out there, as painful and horrible as it was, I also knew I wanted to be there and I wanted to be back and do it again, properly, with training and preparation. Sometimes doing hard things is about saying, yes, this is hard, and it hurts and that’s my fault and next time, I’ll be ready for this. Next time won’t be easy, but maybe next time will be a happier hard.

Doing Hard Things

Jess Guth1 Comment
Me, about half way round the Rasselbock Half Marathon

I started this post quite some time ago – just after finishing the Rasselbock Running Half Marathon at Sherwood Pines just over a month ago. What I started trying to articulate then was that I like to think that I am quite good at doing hard things, that I am ok out of my comfort zone and that I trust myself to do have a go, figure it out and get it done. Just sometimes, I forget. I signed up last minute and did the half marathon to prove that I can indeed still do hard things and that doing those impossible things can indeed be fun. I was struggling for the words then and sort of gave up on the post.

I think I was struggling for words, because what I just said doesn’t quite capture it. I have been thinking about it and now, a month and a bit from doing it and 3 weeks away from the Great North Run, I think I am beginning to untangle it a bit more. So I think the reality is more like this: I love my comfort zone and I love being good at things. I generally only do things I know I will be good at. Being pretty good at school from the start, learning to read and to swim early and being good at horse riding when I first learned as a kid – and those really being the only things I did – I never learned how to learn and work at something. I never actually learned to do hard things – nothing I had to do was hard to me and anything that was hard, I just didn’t do. And I pretty much managed to get through life like that (not consciously, I am just lucky that what I am good at conforms to what society expects – I did well at school, I went to uni, I got a good job and even though it wasn’t quite that simple or linear, it pretty much holds true). And then I started running. I am a crap runner. And I don’t usually mind being a crap runner. Running has taught me 3 key things that I don’t think anything else ever has:

  1. You can be objectively awful at something but still really enjoy it and get pleasure and the benefits from it. Objective success based on society expectations or on what others can do is pretty meaningless.
  2. You can find something really really hard, both physically and mentally and still want to do it, sometimes even enjoy it and get a lot out of it. And the feeling of having enjoyed something once you have finished it even if you didn’t really enjoy it at the time, is a powerful thing.
  3. You can get better at doing hard things. You can train yourself to do hard – not just to get physically better or mentally stronger so that the hard becomes easier- although that’s part of it – but to think about doing hard things in a different way. It’s a way of believing in yourself, trusting yourself and not accepting a ‘no, you can’t do this’ – even from yourself.

But when my running isn’t going well or I am struggling to get out, I no longer feel like I can do hard things. The ‘can’t do this’ voices get louder and doing the impossible no longer seems like fun, it just seems impossible. I retreat to the girl who was good at everything she did because she learned to avoid anything hard. But life’s not like that as an adult. Life is full of hard things. Work is hard – often just with volume of stuff, but sometimes also intellectually. Article revisions, managing relationships, juggling priorities… it can be hard and I am better at it when I remember that I am good at doing hard things. And I become much more confident in my ability to tackle anything when I am consistently running, because consistently running means I am consistently practicing doing hard things. My mental strength and ability to get things done, work at things, prioritise and push through are not something that I have brought from life to running, they’re all things that running has brought into the rest of my life. So without running consistently as a reminder that I can do hard things, the rest becomes the hard things I just don’t do. I end up doing the easy quick win work, I don’t prioritise as well and I avoid the things that will require me to work at them.

And let’s be honest, running has been inconsistent. Some of it has been happy running which has been nice but it has also been easy running with permission to bail out and walk all of it or sit on a beach instead. And that all has its place – but I have not been practicing doing hard things. Not at all. So when Kath saw the Rasselbock Marathon and we discussed doing it so she could get a marathon in as part of her ultra training that particular weekend, I signed up to the Half. Untrained, barely running 2 miles at a time and terrified that I would be so crap that I would be timed out on one of the most inclusive events around. Doing. Hard. Things. I could tell I had got out of the habit because even signing up made me nervous. Was this going to be another DNS or maybe a DNF, was it going to be horrible, how painful was it going to be?

But the thing with signing up fairly last minute means that you don’t have a lot of time to spiral. I was also stupid busy at work so didn’t have much time to think about it and the focus was Kath’s marathon (she was awesome!). I managed to put my half to one side because I convinced myself that I was just going along to support Kath. And then we were on our way down to Sherwood Pines. On Saturday morning we headed for parkrun – might as well. That in itself felt like ‘doing hard’. I was ok going round using my run/walk intervals but I was slow, slower than I am really comfortable with. But that’s just comparing myself to the runner I was rather than focusing on the runner I am now. Nothing hurt though and overall I actually felt ok about the half after having completed the 5k. It was also lovely to see my friend Jo and the Fordy Runs crew at the parkrun and to see the set up for the next day.

Half marathon day came. I set off before Kath. The marathon set off half an hour after the half to avoid congestion on the course. I settled in at the back around the three and a half hour pacer although I had no intention of sticking with a pacer. I know I prefer doing my own thing. However, after a little while the pacer settled in with me. I checked my watch and her pace was off by a lot. We were going downhill and were roughly 14 and a bit minute mining. We chatted a bit and she asked me several times if I thought she was on pace. Then she decided she was ahead of pace and needed to slow down and I thought I would be sensible and join her and we walked a while. Eventually though I remembered that I really need to do my thing and this running faster for a minute and then walking really slowly is not how I pace my run/walk – so I left her and did my thing. I went through mile one at 16 minutes and she was a way behind me so that just confirmed I didn’t want to stick with her. She might be very good at getting round in the specified time but I much prefer even splits. For a couple of miles we leapfrogged each other and then I think she eventually settled into her proper pacing and went ahead. I settled into my own headspace. I was walking more than I wanted to really but mostly I was having a good time. I was enjoying being out there. I was enjoying the feeling of not having a choice but to finish (there’s always a choice), of having a reason to push through the doubts. I just kept plodding. Every now and again I would have a chat with people I passed or coming past me, but never for long.

Kath caught me at an aid station, she was struggling so my focus shifted from me to encouraging her. I had some water and coke and carried on leaving Kath to go to the loo. When she came past me again she looked much stronger and seemed happier. All good. The route was nice – woodland paths, some sand, a lot of shade which was so welcome in the ridiculous heat. Part of the reasoning for this run had been to practice fuelling so I had apricots as well as some haribo and tailwind in both flasks. If I was to get anywhere near the recommended amount of carbs, I’d needed to drink a flask an hour and have several apricots. The haribo were emergency fuel. I was doing ok-ish on the drinking but really struggled eating so gave up on that. When I had nearly finished one flask I wanted to replenish my tailwind at the next water station but I couldn’t get my stick pack open. It just wouldn’t tear. So I gave up in that in a huff and just filled the flask with water and got myself round on that and flat coke from the aid stations. I thought I might like the little pretzels and other things they had but I didn’t want proper food. Not even the haribo. I should of course have just asked for help to get the stick pack open. I honestly just didn’t think of that on the day.

I was genuinely having a great time until about 10 miles. Then I was getting tired. Nothing really hurt, my hips were beginning to niggle. I was pretty much only walking. I knew from my pace that the 3.45 pacers which included my friend Jo would be catching me up soon and when they did it was nice to have some company for a while and chat and catch up a bit. Right towards the end I couldn’t quite keep up with them which annoyed me slightly – I was here to do hard things after all – but I came in at 3.46 something – just behind the first marathon finisher (who had run double my distance in half an hour less than me).

So how did I feel about it. I loved it. I had indeed done the hard thing. I had finished a half marathon in the heat without having trained for it – just going on experience and understanding of how hard I can push my own body safely. I can do hard things. And I did enjoy it and nothing was broken or really painful. Girl did good! But now, a month on. Hm. I walked most of it. It’s the slowest time I have ever recorded for a half, did I really do a hard thing? Didn’t I actually just stay right in my comfort zone and not push? Wouldn’t doing hard things actually mean running more than I did, not stopping to walk quite so easily, having less fun and more determination to get it done more quickly? And I honestly don’t know. Well, no, I know that I couldn’t have pushed much more without risking injury or heat stroke or at a minimum just utter misery. And I keep trying to remind myself that ‘hard’ does not mean miserable and awful or stupid and risky. And what I did that day was hard. There were times when I wanted to stop but not seriously, and there were times where I did push myself to run a bit more and to get moving. I am trying to remember that I was taking a baby step towards getting used to doing hard again. But I don’t quite believe it.

How I feel now is probably shaped by running since then. I have, once again, not been consistent. I ran a little 5k the week after, another 3 miles in the Yorkshire Dales a couple of weeks ago and a 5 mile plod along the canal at home last week. That’s it. Hardly sensible or even useful Great North Run training. So yeah, The Rasselbock Half was all about reminding myself that I can do hard. And it was a well timed and needed reminder. That reminder now needs build into a habit. Doing hard as a one off takes effort and willpower. Being practiced at doing hard, being in the habit of just doing it even if it seems impossible, being comfortable with the possibility of failure but refusing to not try because I might fail, or worrying about the possibility of being outside the comfort zone, finding something tricky or not being able to do it – all those things come with consistent running and re-wiring my brain so it doesn’t just know, it also believes that doing the impossible is fun.